Friday, November 28, 2014

Workout of the Day: Gobble Gobble

It was Thanksgiving AND Bruce Lee's birthday?! If eater's remorse wasn't enough to get you off your duff, paying homage to one of the great icons of martial arts, fitness and cinema should have been. The Bruce had a pretty open minded approach to the arts and working out. Feeling traditional, total adherence to one style was dumb, Lee openly sought out to learn from different disciplines like boxing, wrestling, grappling and the like. When it came to fitness, The Bruce was known for lifting weights, isometrics, running, jump roping, hitting the heavy bag and sparring to keep light on his feet but able to deliver powerful punches and kicks.

This was a home routine done on an empty stomach, I've been waking up around 5:00AM all week so this simple, 3 exercise routine wouldn't challenge me too much mentally. This was to work my lower back and keep it strong then the Goblet Squats (holding DB on one end in front of chest) let you get a deeper range of motion. Keeping my reps in the 10-12 area, 8 sets was a bit much for my lower back but my quads felt good. Adding 100 skips of the rope is an easy way to get in some cardio and takes under a minute. According to Bruce, 1 minute of rope is equal to 3 of jogging and with all the treats coming up, the more cardio, the better. I followed the weights up with some ab exercises, I don't know about you but my stomach always feels tighter when I do some reps every other day. Just simple crunches of various kinds in the 30 rep range super setted with trunk twists followed by more rope. Usually I'll do sets of 50 then change to a different foot fall pattern.

On Thanksgiving Day, I hit the empty streets and nearly barren gym for:

1) Standing Barbell Press/Preacher Curl/J-Press
- For mass and I could use one pre-set barbell for each exercise to save on time.
2) Rear DB Raises/Frank Zane Curl (leaning into an incline bench)/Hammer Extensions
- Changing to DB's works the muscles and limbs independently then gives a little more shape from the wrists not being locked in place.
3) Side Cable Raise/Rope Hammer Curl/Rope Extensions
- Going from barbells, to dumbbells to cable puts stress on the muscle differently. In this case the constant tension is good for definition.
4) Front DB Raise/Concentration Curl/DB Extension
- While I did 3 sets of the previous giant sets, this fourth and final tri-set was more or less to burn out.

Followed by some calf raises, forearms, neck and 4 miles on the bike I was ready to go and try to eat my age in platefuls of food. Just kidding, I only do that with slices of pie...